After a quick catch up, we kicked off with The Search for Planet X.
In this deductive undertaking, you are astronomers scanning the solar system for the mysterious (and actually plausible in real life) extra planet. The board is separated into 12 sectors (18 if you're feeling expert, but we did 12) and nine have a single thing in them (comet, gas cloud, asteroid, or dwarf planet) while three are apparently empty (two are genuinely empty; one will actually be hiding Planet X itself). Each game has some universal rules about how these things relate to each other, and also some specific ones that are furnished by the app. Your goal is to find the Planet, obviously, but the method of doing so is deducing what is in all the sectors, and while you're doing this the game invites you to submit theories as to what celestial body is where - because these theories score points, you can actually win even if you don't locate the planet first.
On each turn you choose whether to survey (look for a specific object in specific sectors) research (uncover facts about how objects relate to each other) and, only twice a game, target (establish categorically what is in one sector of your choice). All actions take time, and the furthest back on the time track is the active player - like a spacey version of Tokaido. Although the app suddenly needed an update halfway through, the mechanics are actually simple - and the submitted theories, when proved right, give additional clues to help you work out what's where. The brain-melting is applying the incremental drip of info to the elimination and clarification of what, exactly, is where, in the firmament.
My early targeting found an apparently empty sector, which didn't really help with my opening theory (you can't theorise that there's nothing ) but found the solitary Dwarf Planet with my second. Martin revealed later he'd located the two comets early on, and he led the running in the theories from the get-go. I could have been first to find Planet X but I made a critical error, surveying when I didn't actually need to. As it turned out, it wouldn't have been enough anyway: Martin's astronomy skills were superior to mine.
Martin 29
Sam 19
Having completed a great step forward for mankind, we took a couple backwards to try Martin's acquisition of Heir to the Pharaoh. It's a tricky one to precis, but I'll give it a quick go: bid for God cards to put things on a track and get monuments and build obelisks and stuff that point at other obelisks and stuff for points and contribute to a pyramid and if things point at the pyramid they score themselves too and get Magic Animals.
Yes, it's pretty abstract, and pretty bonkers as well, but we liked it. There's a nifty bidding mechanic where sun cards beat moon cards in ties, and bidded cards go to the opposing player at the start of the next round. It was a mixture of Knizia and someone a bit more fiddly, but a lot of fun.
I led through much of the game, but having reached peak red wine around the halfway mark, couldn't quite crack the puzzle playing out on the board itself, satisfying myself with monument collections and pyramid contributions. Twice I ended up with a single God (along with Thoth, the God of catch-up mechanisms and round-resetting) and on the penultimate round I spent so much that my final bidding hand was predominantly a confection of low moon cards.
Martin - loads of points
Sam - about ten less points
We wrapped up with Letterpress, at which point my memories get a little bit blurry except to say I temporarily convinced myself I could spell advisable as advizable and my stashed cards for the final, critical round, looked like some kind of consonant-heavy secret code. I managed a thematically-apt DAZED, but Martin came up trumps with a very impressive BLUSTERY.
Lots of fun. I hope we'll be growing the numbers at some point, somewhere, soon. Meantime if anyone fancies a head-to-head evening of physically distant fun...???
Lovely to see you and enjoyed all the games a lot.
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